


means, motive, opportunity

by dessertarianism



Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble Collection, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 16:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6864793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dessertarianism/pseuds/dessertarianism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles where Sakuma is a long-suffering detective (with horrible bags under his eyes) and Miyoshi is an eccentric (with good skin) who occasionally deigns it necessary to help mere mortals solve criminal cases. </p><p>Part 4: In which Sakuma and Miyoshi (sort of) play badminton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. leave a message after the beep

1.

The shrill ringing of his mobile forced Sakuma awake. He shot upright and barely caught himself from falling off his bed.

He groped for his phone and immediately accepted the call. “This is Sakuma. Has there been any development? Did they find any new—?!“

“—Good morning, Sakuma-san.”

Sakuma paused. Then uttered with extreme feeling, “Fuck. You. Miyoshi.”

“Hmm, I’ll have to think about it. Anyway I called you to ask which route you’d suggest for an early morning jog—”

Sakuma ended the call abruptly then plopped down face first into his pillow.

-

2.

Sakuma was in the middle of typing out a text message to one of the junior detectives when his cell phone started ringing.

The words flashed at his screen: Incoming call. Miyoshi.

The temptation to decline the call was overwhelming. But experience has taught him that it was better for everyone involved to simply indulge Miyoshi and his whims instead of ignoring him.

“What do you want,” he asked, struggling to keep his tone even.

“What did you have for lunch?”

“Huh?!”

Miyoshi sighed on the other line. “I’m asking you what you had for lunch to give me some idea. Hatano cancelled on me so now I don’t know what to eat.”

“Chicken nanban bento from Family Mart. And just go eat where you were planning to eat lunch in the first place.”

Miyoshi didn’t answer immediately.

Sakuma could almost see him wrinkling his nose in disapproval.

“A convenience store lunch box. How predictable. As a grown man you do know you should eat better right? And I don’t want to eat at Joel Robuchon _again_. I feel like I eat nothing but French cuisine when I’m with Hatano.”

“Eat something Japanese then. You’re Japanese, aren’t you?”

“Mostly Japanese to be exact. And now that you mention it teppanyaki sounds good. Hmm, but maybe not beef. Crab and lobster teppanyaki would be nice.”

“I hate you,” Sakuma said flatly, before pressing the end call button with a vengeance.

-

3.

Sakuma had carelessly left his cell phone at his desk when he went out to interview a suspect.

When he got back, he had five missed calls and one unread text message from Miyoshi.

_the nyt crossword misspelled amenhotep :(_

-

4.

Sakuma was reviewing a presentation when the landline at his desk rang.

He had a briefing to give in a few hours time and he still hadn’t gone over all of the slides. He didn’t bother taking his eyes off of his laptop screen; sheer muscle memory allowed him to press the speaker phone button correctly.

“Sakuma here—”

“—Do you think I should change my eye cream? I don’t think my current one—”

Someone had left the volume on high, so Miyoshi’s voice reverberated in the tiny room Sakuma shared with Odagiri and Tazaki.

Sakuma couldn’t have grabbed the handset fast enough.

“Why are you calling me here?!” Sakuma hissed.

Miyoshi huffed impatiently. “I told you, I need your opinion on—”

“—I didn’t mean that! And stop calling me on the landline!”

“Why? Is Tazaki there? Odagiri?”

Thankfully no.

“No. Both of them are gone,” Sakuma answered shortly.

He could hear Miyoshi chuckle on the other end.

“They left you to do all the work again, huh?”

“Shut up,” Sakuma muttered. “And why don’t you try getting some proper sleep instead of wasting your money on eye creams?! It’s three am! You should be sleeping!”

Sakuma hung up before Miyoshi could point out the hypocrisy in his statement.

-

5.

Miyoshi answered on the third ring. “Is this about the murder along the river?”

Sakuma sputtered. “How did you—?! No! It’s not about that!”

He winced at the denial. He _was_ calling because of the murder along the river.

Miyoshi seemed to know it too because he had adopted a faux hurt tone. “No one ever calls me just to say hello.”

Sakuma refused to give him the satisfaction. “I’m going to drop by your lab later. I expect you to treat me to ramen.”

He could just ask Miyoshi his opinion about the murder over dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to write a detective galileo au but this basically just turned into miyoshi and sakuma flirting over the phone OTL


	2. sophistication

Sakuma was nocturnal because of his chosen career.

The working hours of a detective in homicide were not for the faint-hearted. There were days when he got home at two in the morning only to set his alarm at six am sharp. And that was the best case scenario. The worst case scenario was passing out on top of case files at his desk and wearing the same suit for three days straight.

But Miyoshi was different. He was nocturnal entirely by choice and he seemed to thrive on it.

So theirs was a friendship built on midnight meetups at bars filled with smoke and eating stale popcorn at empty cinemas during the last screening.

Which was why Sakuma found it a little disconcerting to stand by Miyoshi’s side in front of a fashionable restaurant during the lunch rush.

Sunlight seemed to agree with Miyoshi. His hair shone reddish brown under it and his skin seemed to glow. (Clearly, the small fortune he was spending on skin care was yielding great returns.) Sakuma, on the other hand, knew that it only made his pallor more pronounced.

He shifted from one foot to another.

Miyoshi, on the other hand, seemed content to watch the passing traffic in utter stillness. He was the picture of understated elegance in his dark fitted pants and crisp white shirt. The tortoise shell glasses perched on his nose were nothing but an affectation but it suited him nonetheless.

The effect was rather ruined when he pulled out a lollipop from his pocket.

“Are you serious?”

Miyoshi carefully unwrapped the candy. “I told you I’m quitting smoking, didn’t I? It’s bad for the skin.” He popped the candy into his mouth before eyeing Sakuma speculatively.

He glared back defiantly as Miyoshi raked his gazed over him.

Miyoshi slowly pulled the lollipop from his mouth. “You should also consider quitting Sakuma-san. Your skin’s looking a bit rough. And please do something about the bags under your eyes.”

He took a step closer towards Sakuma, and in one smooth movement raised his hand to his face and swiped a thumb lightly under one of the aforementioned shadows under his eyes.

“Your concern is noted,” Sakuma said with a huff.

“Still making no headway in the case? You seem to be sleeping badly these days. Well, much worse than you usually do anyway.”

“It just doesn’t make sense. The ex-wife has a solid alibi but I don’t know…” Sakuma worried his bottom lip. He knew Miyoshi was going to tease him about this but he couldn’t think of a better way to explain it.“Some guys at the department think she didn’t do it but I feel like something doesn’t add up.”

“You _feel_? But you don’t have any evidence against her, right?” Miyoshi asked archly.

Sakuma sighed. “Yes, that’s right.”

“You can’t accuse someone base on intuition alone. Try to be a little more logical here, Sakuma-san. Surely you’ve developed some theories about this case. This time tell me what you _think_.”

“Sure. But can we do it somewhere else?”

Miyoshi gasped, lips forming an O. “Sakuma-san, are you trying to proposition me in broad daylight?” 

“Now _that’s_ a leap of logic.” Sakuma said dryly as he grabbed Miyoshi by his upper arm and lead him towards the entrance of the restaurant. “I just want to be sitting down when you prove all my ideas wrong.”

“Or we could save some time and I could just tell you right now: you’re wrong.”

Sakuma frowned heavily as Miyoshi asked the waitress for a table for two.

“You never know, I could be right,” he grumbled.

“You just admitted yourself that you’re wrong.”

They were still arguing when the waitress led them to a booth.

“But it’s different when I’m hearing it from someone else. Especially when it’s coming from you.”

A menu was placed in front of them but they paid it no heed. Miyoshi rested his elbows on the edge of the table and steepled his fingers.“Fine then. If I don’t find any holes in your theory, I’ll pay for lunch. But if you’re wrong then you’re paying.”

Sakuma raised his chin.

“You’re on.”

Miyoshi smirked. “I’m ordering the most expensive thing on the menu then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the case being discussed by sakuma and miyoshi is the one from 'the devotion of suspect x.' everything belongs to the genius of keigo higashino.


	3. endgame

Miyoshi sighed.

Then he carefully took off his glasses and set it beside the chessboard.

Sakuma glared at him because one: those glasses were fake and he hated them. Two: the action screamed _I won’t be needing these_. 

Propping a cheek on one hand, Miyoshi sighed again.

“Shut up,” Sakuma hissed.

Miyoshi stared blankly at the clock on the wall. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking it,” Sakuma accused.

Miyoshi pouted but he didn’t bother to deny it.

Sakuma huffed. There was nowhere for his king to run. Every possible move would end in checkmate.

“You know, chess really isn’t my kind of game—” he started.

“—Oh please,” Miyoshi rolled his eyes. “Spare me.”

“I mean! For one thing why can’t we use the opponent’s pieces we’ve won? They’re spoils of war! Why can’t I add them to my army?”

“When you take your opponent’s piece, you’re killing them. There’s no use for dead soldiers.”

“But you can use them in shogi!”

“Well then, I guess we must give credit to the man who made shogi so flexible. I suppose when you capture pieces in shogi you’re making them surrender instead of killing them.”

“Chess should be the same way!”

Miyoshi tucked his fringe behind his left ear, only for the strands to fall back into his face. “I don’t think going turncoat sits well with the spirit of knighthood.”

"I give up." Sakuma shook his head. “This is a disaster. I don’t know why you keep asking me to play chess since you always win anyway.”

“Well then, do you want to play something else? One of the students left a monopoly board lying around somewhere in this lab.”

“No. You cheat in monopoly.”

“How does one cheat in monopoly exactly? How about poker?”

“Absolutely not.”

“ _Strip_ poker then?” asked Miyoshi, eyelids falling to half-mast, lips forming a sly smile. 

Sakuma refused to blush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in the flattest tone he could manage.

Miyoshi slumped in his seat elegantly. (Sakuma wasn’t quite sure how one went about slumping elegantly, but Miyoshi managed to do just that.)

“Then what do we do now? We still have quite some time before dinner—! Oh! I think Hatano’s doing a really important experiment at lab eleven.”

He raised both eyebrows meaningfully at Sakuma. “Maybe you can make something explode again.”

Sakuma tried not to grin too widely. “That was one time and it was accident! But yeah we should go check up on him.”

Miyoshi was already standing up, hands smoothing down the non-existent creases in his clothes.

“Yes. Maybe we could even offer him some help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chess/shogi conversation was lifted almost verbatim from chapter 3 of the devotion of suspect x. i had to write a drabble based on that scene because it's honestly what made me pause and go 'this will make the perfect sakumiyo au.'


	4. rally

Sakuma hurried through the gym doorway, hair askew and slightly out of breath.

“I’m sorry I’m late!”

Miyoshi ignored him. He held the shuttle in front of his body, wrist locked, right hand ready to swing a forehand long serve. The shuttles that littered the opposite side of the court told Sakuma that Miyoshi had been practicing his serves for some time now.

Sakuma watched Miyoshi strike the shuttle. The follow through was textbook perfect and the shuttle predictably dropped at the backline of his imaginary opponent’s service court.  

When Miyoshi finally turned to acknowledge Sakuma, he did so with an air of practiced nonchalance. He deftly twirled the badminton racket in his palm before gesturing vaguely towards the other side of the court.

“So you’ve finally made an appearance. I guess we can start after you’ve picked up the shuttlecocks.”

If it were anyone else, Sakuma would’ve bristled at the mere idea of someone casually ordering him around. But this _was_ Miyoshi. So instead, he arched an eyebrow and made a show of surveying him from head to toe.

“Okay. But you do know this isn’t Wimbledon.”

Miyoshi wore white on unrelieved white, from his shirt down to his sneakers. Even the wrist band wrapped around his deceptively delicate wrist was the color of driven snow.

He inclined his chin and peered at Sakuma through his lashes, lips pressed together in a painfully a straight line.

It was the exact same look Miyoshi leveled at people who wore socks with their sandals.

“I look good in white,” was the succinct explanation.

Sakuma lied through his teeth. “I don’t know. It kind of washes you out.”

If he wasn’t waiting for a reaction from Miyoshi he would’ve missed the brief flicker of irritation that passed through his face.

“I beg to differ. Numerous people have told me that white goes nicely with my skin. I believe it gives me a certain glow.”

“ _Numerous people_?”

“Yes,” Miyoshi replied shortly.

“And can you actually name these people?”

“Of course. But that would take all night. So are we going to play or do you want to hear me rattle off a list of people who think I look divine in white?”

Sakuma tried not to grin too widely. “Nope, let’s play. Tell me about all those people some other time. Best out of three?”

“Let’s make it best out of five.”

Sakuma blinked. “Five games? Up to how many points?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one?! That’s going to take all night!”

Miyoshi tilted his head sideways and paused.

And Sakuma suddenly remembered how he’d had to cancel on their last two meetups because of work. So he grimaced and bit out, “Fine. But you’re buying dinner.”

Miyoshi smiled, pleased to be finally getting his way. “The loser will buy dinner as per usual. 

“That’s exactly what I meant,” Sakuma said as motioned towards the other end of the court to pick up the shuttles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaahhh i'll look at this again tomorrow. this was written in a rush bc i desperately wanted to write something light-hearted ;~~;
> 
> also for those who mignt not know, i didn't choose badminton randomly. in the detective galileo series, the characters whom i based sakuma and miyoshi on played badminton together in uni :D


End file.
